Chronicle Editor
Andile Tshuma
Bulawayo mornings can be cold. Many people struggle to leave the comfort and warmth of their blankets each morning before dragging themselves through a daily routine, out of necessity, and then setting off for the day.
How often should we bath in winter though? Sounds like a silly question, I know. But social media has been awash recently with the question of how often one must bath. These chilly mornings are making people avoid the shower and I swear I had someone say of late they do not even shower after a workout session at the gym just because it’s too cold.
I find this worrying because personal hygiene has an almost direct impact on your health, and to some extent, the health of those around you too.
A lot of jokes have been doing the rounds with some people sharing memes (funny images) of people struggling to take a full bath. I saw one person just put their toes first and the whole foot, the leg, eventually all four limbs, one after the other but the trunk of the body remained too sacred for a cold shower.
A cold bath in this kind of weather is particularly traumatising. If you have a solar powered geyser, lucky you. However, if you rely on the national grid for your ration of warm water, all I can say is the struggle is real and I feel your pain. An option would be to warm water with a gas cooker but gas is so expensive of late, last time I checked it was around RTGS$ 16 per kilogramme.
Some people have paraffin stoves but I wonder how they are coping because I haven’t seen service stations with any paraffin lately. Maybe I should look harder. I just wish to appeal to Zesa or whoever came up with the load shedding time table to please bear with us and consider the pleas of Zimbabweans. It’s cold out here. Imagine you wake up, there’s no electricity in the morning, if it’s a Monday I think the whole week is just almost ruined as it has kicked off on a bad foot.
Having to bear ice cold water amidst cold weather and frost that gives that chilly burning sensation and can remind most people of the old boarding school days where many people went back home after the midterm with scars of frost bites. Imagine some children in our beloved country are still walking long distances to school, barefoot. Our efforts must reach out to these little fellas.
I spoke to a dermatologist who said bathing daily was not really a daily requirement for the maintenance of healthy skin. Do not celebrate just yet, she was just talking about needs of the skin, her scope is on dermatology, but she also reiterated that grooming and hygiene were still important even amid the biting mornings in our beautiful city.
I have realised that most parents do not bath children in the morning during winter. Most people I spoke to in a snap survey said in winter, their children bath before going to bed so that in the morning they just wash their face and off to school they go. The children that had to endure a full bath each morning were those who have a bedwetting problem. However, research shows that children who take a full bath each morning are often healthier and less likely to catch infections, fevers and flues as compared to those that did not.
Bathing everyday even in this cold weather, characterised by power cuts that suck all the joy out of most of us actually has a number of benefits even for adults.
On lazy weekends, when you feel too tired to get up from the bed, the thought of breaking the daily ritual and skipping a bath occurs habitually, isn’t it? Well, you should know that bathing doesn’t just keep you fresh and smelling good, but also serves to keep you fit and healthy.
For older persons, a daily warm bath has its interesting benefits such as reduction of muscle tension which can help in reducing the number of trips to a physiotherapist. Bathing reduces tension on overstretched muscles. It helps to heal sore muscles by relaxing them and improves flexibility or elasticity of muscles, especially when you bathe after exercising.
Bathing also helps improve blood circulation therefore immersing yourself in a tub filled with water or taking a shower increases blood circulation to the limbs and helps in nourishment of damaged cells at the extremities. With increased blood circulation, the blood pressure reduces and the heart function also improves.
Experts say bathing helps to improve the immune system. A recent academic study showed that taking a cold shower regularly can stimulate the vascular and lymph system to produce more immune cells that fight infections. This can decrease your chances of falling sick over the year. If you’re prone to depression then a cold water bath can help you tremendously as health experts say that exposure to cold water results in activation of the nervous system. It increases the level of the chemicals beta-endorphin and noradrenaline in the blood which reduces depression. A cold shower also sends electrical impulses from the brain which causes an anti-depressive effect. So why not just bath, even if it’s cold.
No matter how much deodorant you spray on yourself, if you go out without taking a bath you will stink. If you sweat a lot, then you should never skip a bath. Sweating is a means by which the body eliminates toxins. With daily bath your perspiration odour will be reduced greatly. Warm water bath not only drains out all the toxins but also kills bacteria and viruses, which will also decrease the number of infections you may suffer throughout the year.
If you have sleeping disorders or strange sleeping patterns, bathing just before going to bed can induce sleep. In some people, it has shown to improve the quality of sleep while in others it has also cured insomnia.
It is also said that bathing improves lung function. Think about that reflex reaction to cold water splashing on your back. It forces you to breathe deeply with a quick pause. When cold water hits you, you instantly tend to hold your breath for a couple of seconds followed by deep exhalation. This opens up the lungs and increases the uptake of oxygen.
A lot of goodness comes with bathing. Feeling fresh and looking good will generally make one feel good and confident. When you feel good and confident, you can do just about anything. And your presence is pleasant to those around you. Just don’t let the cold mornings cost you the goodness of bathing. — @andile_tshuma
Online Reporter